Minding My Business With NYU Senior Associate AD Janice Quinn

NYU Senior Associate AD JANICE QUINN is a lifelong New Yorker. A native of Bay Shore, Quinn began her association with NYU in ’81 as a student-athlete and is now in her 26th year as an athletic administrator. She said, “If you walk around our campus, the palpable experience is that it is New York, that it is the center of the universe. You can’t even walk into our athletic facility without seeing 14 clocks for you to be able to look up and know what time it is in Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Prague, Florence, Shanghai, etcetera.” Quinn in August launched an initiative called “TeamNYUGlobal: Education, Service and Sport” to further encompass that cultural diversity. Quinn this week spoke to THE DAILY about athletics, technology and the best restaurant in the city.

Our industry needs more of…
Athleticsis a service provider. And I think Division III has it right, and I think NYU has it right. Athletics should be an integral part of the overall student-athlete experience. Both parts are equally important -- the student part and the athletics part. The shift needs to continuously fight back toward service providing versus revenue generating.

The one thing I look for when interviewing a job candidate is…
The most important thing is someone who has an outstanding, exceptional ability to communicate. The second one, side by side, is we need someone who wants and understands how to work very hard. Athletics is not an industry that you can be successful in unless you bring both of those things to the table in large measure.

The best advice I ever received…
It came from my dad, many years ago. He told me fact-check everything and wear great shoes. His message was, above all, substance. You have to fact check everything. Substance is important. But you know what, image is also important. The image that you portray makes a difference.

The first media I consume each day is…
I can’t exist without Fox 5 with ROSANNA SCOTTO and GREG KELLY. That’s on in the background, and then my Twitter feed is propped up on my phone, so I’m looking at my Twitter feed for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and NYU Local.

iPhone or BlackBerry…
iPhone 5. I was a huge BlackBerry fan because, in all honesty, my dad had one even before they were phones. The big, old, clunky BlackBerrys. And he was a BlackBerry guy before he passed away, so when I had an opportunity to get out of a regular phone and into a smartphone I wanted a BlackBerry because it kind of connected me to my dad. But after I had the iPhone in my hands for about 10 minutes, I said “I can’t give it up.” And I think because of the access to media. I feel that I can do things much more efficiently when I can be checking in very, very quickly with Twitter and Facebook as a news reel, as my own news reel, knowing what’s going on in the world. I feel very connected to the world in that way.

A technology that has changed the way I work…
It’s a combination. The MacBook Air, once I switched over to something so powerful and so light that you could practically put it in your pocket. I have a desktop computer, but really the switch to the iPhone and MacBook Air, it just changed things for me. Everywhere I am, I am my own completely self-sufficient office.

The best restaurant in N.Y. is…
It has got to be Tamarind’s Indian restaurant on Park and 21st. It’s just one of the greatest dining experiences in New York.

My favorite way to relax is…
Read. I’m really all about the JANE AUSTEN books right now. So that’s when I get home, when if I’ve got extra fluid in my eyes, that’s what I want to do. And listen to the Piano Guys on Spotify.

A TV show that is always DVR’d is…
"Downton Abbey," but that’s just a short series. "NCIS" always has to be DVR’d and watched. I love that the good guy always wins, that’s really important in my life and I love the discipline of anything related to the military.